The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1887-06-02

tribute them, shall be cut to pieces,
if not by an aroused community, then, at
last by the hail of divine vengeance, which
shall sweep to the lowest pit Of perdition
all We murderers of souls. / tell you,
though you may escape in this world, you
will be ground AT last under the hoof of
eternal calamities, and you will be
chained to the rock, and you will have the
vultures of despair clawing at your soul,
and these whom you have destroyed will
come around to torment you, and to pour
hotter Goals of fury upon your head, and
rejoice eternally in the cutlery of your
pain and the howl of your damnation.
God shall wound the hairy scalp of him that
goeth on in his trespasses.
The clock strikes midnight. A fair form
bends over romance. The eyes flash
fire. The breath is quick and irregular.
Occasionally the color dashes to the
cheek, and then dies out The hands
tremble as though a guardian
spirit were trying to shake the
deadly book out of the grasp. Hot tears
fall. She laughs with shrill voice that
drops dead at its own sound. The sweat
on her trow is the spray dashed up from
the river of death. The clock strikes a.
and the rosy dawn soon after begins to
look through the lattice upon the pale
form that looks like detained specter Of
the night. Soon in mad-house she will
mistake her ringlets for curling serpents,
and thrust her white hand through the
bars of the prison, and smite her head,
rubbing it back as though to push the
scalp from the skull, shrieking: ssMy
braini my brainrs
Oh, stand of from thatl Why will
you go sounding your way amid the reefs
and warning buoys, when there is such
vast ocean in which you may voyage, all
sail'set?
There is one other thing I shall say this
morning before leave you, whether you
want to hear it or not That IS, that con-
slider the lascivious rhetorical literature
OF the day as most tremendous for ruin.
There is no one who can like good pict-
ures better than I do. The quickest and
most condensed way of impressing the
public mind is by pictures. What the
painter does by his brush for few favor
ties the engraver does by his knife for the
million. What the author accomplishes
by fifty pages the artist does by fash.
The best part of painting that costs $l0,-
600 you may buy for ten cents. Fine
paintings belong to the aristocracy of art.
Engravings belong to the democracy of
art. You do well to gather good pictures
in You homes. Spread them before your
children after the tea hour is past.
and the evening circle is gathered.
Throw them on the invalid's couch.
Strew them through the rail train to
cheer the traveller on his journey. Tack
them on the wall of the nursery. Gather
them in albums and portfolios. God
speed the good pictures on their way
with ministries Of knowledge and mercy
But what shall say of the prostitution
Of this art to purposes of mig uityl These
death-warrants of the soul are at every
street corner. They smite the vision of
the young man with pollution. Many a
young man buying a copy has bought his
eternal discontinue. There may be
enough poison in one bad picture to pois-
on one soul, and that soul may poison ten,
and ten fifty, and the fifty hundreds,
and the hundreds thousands, until
nothing but the measuring line of eterni-
ty can tell the height, and depth and
ghastliness, and horror of the great I'M
doing. The work of death that the wick
ed author does in whole book the bad
engraver may do on half side of picto-
rial.
Young man, buy not this moral strych-
nine for your soul. Pick not up this nest
of coiled adders for your pocket. Patron
ize no newsstand that keeps them. Have
your room bright with good engravings,
but for these outrageous pictorials have
not one wall, not one bureau. not one
pocket. A man is no better than the pict-
ure he loves to look at. If your eyes are
not pure, your heart can not be. At a
newsstand one can guess the character Of
| man by the kind of pictorial he pur-
chases When the devil fails to get man
to read bad book, he sometimes succeeds
| in getting him to look at bad picture
When Satan goes a-fishing he does not
care whether it is long line or short
line, If he OILY draws his victim in. Be-
ware OF lasciyious pictorials, young man,
| in the name of Almighty God I charge
you.
II have this morning successfully laid
down any principles by which you may
judge in regard TO books and newspapers,
then have done something which shall
not be ashamed of on the day which shall
| try every mans work, Of what sort it is.
| Cherish good books and newspapers
Beware OF the bad ones. The column
may save your soul; one paragraph may
| ruin it. Benjamin Franklin said that the
reading of Cotton Mather's essay on '.Do-
ing Goodr nodded his entire life The
| assassin Of Lord Russell declared that ne
was led into crime by reading one vivid
romance. The consecrated John Angel
James, than whom England never pro-
duced a better man, declared in his
old days that he had never yet got over
the evil effects of having for fifteen min
| utes once read bad book. But need
| not go so far of. l could come near home
and tell you Of something that occurred in
my college days. / could tell you of a
comrade that was great hearted, noble
and generous. He was studying for an
honorable profession, but he had an in
fidel book in his trunk, and he said to me
one day:
'De Witt, would you like to read itp'
said: Eyes, l would.n I took the
book and read it only for few minutes.
was really startled with what saw
there, and handed the book back to him
and said:
/ sYou had better destroy that book"
No. he kept it. He read it. He re-read
it. After awhile he gave up religion as
myth. He gave up God as a nonenity.
/ He pave mn the Rihia IA n fahla Ha erova